Qingchen once thought about it, would anyone else have a countdown on their arms?
It is precisely because of this speculation that he took the subway to go far away to verify some things so carefully, so as not to be found by clues in the future.
But later a series of changes followed, making Qing Chen almost forgot this speculation.
It now appears that his guess has finally become a reality.
There must be a lot of people who have traveled from the earth to this world. There are two prisons alone, not to mention the world outside the prisons.
How many people are there? Several hundred? Several thousand?
What did they cross because of?
Qing Chen could not be sure.
"This newcomer is a bit interesting, I'm afraid it's not a fool," someone looked at the collapsed teenager and laughed: "I heard that he came in because of tax evasion and was sentenced to 7 years? Didn't he come in yesterday? Cry, cry until now."
"Those who dare to provoke tax collection agencies these days are not fools..."
Qing Chen looked at the source of the sound. It was a young man with mechanical legs. When the other party saw him looking, he raised the corners of his mouth and smiled: "Hey, newcomer, are you ready?"
The surrounding crowd burst into laughter suddenly, and seemed to be waiting for a good show.
This place is obviously so sci-fi and advanced, but the evil side of mankind doesn't seem to have changed.
Qing Chen frowned, but ignored it. He looked at the young man surrounded by drones again.
I am afraid that only he knows that the reason why the other party did not cry yesterday and did not cry today is that the other party, just like himself, has just passed through the "greenhouse" of the earth, and is somewhat unable to accept this reality.
This is not a guess, but he has seen each other.
Qing Chen is 17 years old this year, and he is a sophomore at the Los Angeles Foreign Language School.
The collapsed teenager is a first grade senior.
The two have not had any intersection, but Qing Chen never forgets, as long as they have seen it, it is hard to forget.
This made Qing Chen a little surprised. Could it be that the location before the crossing was close, and the location after the crossing would be very close?
He can't be sure.
But Qing Chen discovered one thing: all the people here were speaking Mandarin, and none of them spoke dialect.
At this moment, the machine guard is rushing up the stairs, and each step can cross the five-step staircase, accompanied by the unique sound of hydraulic transmission.
The young man was already crying like a man.
Half of the people in this prison fortress are loaded with mechanical limbs, and encountering people on earth in a place surrounded by such steel beasts, it feels quite like a stranger in another country.
Most people will feel an inexplicable sense of security when they encounter a "hometown" in an unfamiliar place.
Ke Qingchen didn't feel this way. He looked at the teenager who was on the verge of collapse and realized that "hometown" may not help you, but may become a drag.
Not everyone is still calm in the face of this newly arrived mechanical civilization.
What he has to do now is to survive the first two days, and then return to Earth to understand why all this is happening.
Qing Chen watched in silence, not knowing why, but his mood at the moment became more calm.
Until this time, all the prisoners were still standing motionless.
He looked around the prison fortress. The nine robots who had just rushed from the gate outside the prison area left three of them under martial law in the square downstairs, while the rest went upstairs to take the panicked teenager away.
The square downstairs is very wide and feels the size of a football field.
The open square is divided into several areas: restaurant, fitness equipment entertainment area, reading area, audio-visual area, etc...
There is no partition between these areas, like a large free activity place, and on the edge of the square, there are 8 large steel gates.
Those gates are so large that they can allow armored vehicles to pass directly.
Suddenly Qing Chen was stunned. He saw that three people had already appeared at the dining table in the square downstairs.
A middle-aged man who appeared to be in his forties was sitting, and two other young men stood beside him with a smile, and then looked up at the prisoners upstairs with interest.
A chess board was placed in front of the middle-aged man, and an endgame was set on the board.
The most amazing thing was that beside the chessboard on the dining table, there was a cat nap with paws lying on it. It was gray with two pointed hairs on its ears. It looked a bit like a lynx, but it wasn't.
Maine Coon cat.
Can cats be kept in prison? !
Qing Chen was a little surprised, his eyes were attracted by the "comrades" just now, so that he didn't see when the three people and the cat came to the square.
At this moment, I saw the middle-aged man staring at the chessboard intently, as if what happened upstairs had nothing to do with him.
What's more, what surprised Qing Chen most was that even the robots on the square were treated as if these three people and one cat did not exist.
The seriousness and tension upstairs and the ease and calmness downstairs are like a sharp contrast between two different worlds.
Among the three, two young men wore normal blue and white prison uniforms, while the middle-aged man wore a white practice uniform.
In this gloomy and depressing environment, the white dust was extremely dusty.
Qing Chen thought to himself, could this be the warden?
No, although the other party is wearing a training suit different from other prisoners, the chest of the training suit is also embroidered with a small black sentence number.
This middle-aged man is also a prisoner, but the most special one.
As if feeling his gaze, a young man beside the middle-aged man suddenly turned his head and looked back at him with a smile.
Qing Chen took it back immediately.
After the crashed Earth boy was taken away, the announcement rang from the prison fortress again: "Go to the restaurant in the queue for dinner."
As soon as the voice fell, Qing Chen saw all the prisoners turn to the right, and then lined up in a long line, walking along the stairs to the square.
Only then did Qing Chen have the opportunity to count all the prisoners: including him, 3102.
This prison fortress has a total of seven floors, and each layer of prisoners forms a team, led by the prisoner at the front of the team, to the restaurant in an orderly manner.
During this period, no one jumped in and no one left the team. Qing Chen felt that everyone here seemed to be operating according to the established procedures, and everything was "constrained" by others.
This order does not end until everyone finishes the meal from the robot window.
It seems that you can move around freely after finishing the meal.
Qing Chen and the others lived on the fifth floor, so when it was their turn to eat, the people on the first floor had already finished their meal. Two burly prisoners pulled a young man directly to the nearest restaurant. As we walked to the cell in the building, many people clamored beside them.
Others confessed: "Hurry up and pull him into the cell, don't hurt him on the square, be careful of the robotic prison guards intervening."
The prisoner who was pulling the young man casually responded, "Don't worry, I'm not a fool like Yang Jie."
At the same time, the young man struggled and yelled: "Let go of me!"
But just when he was about to be pulled into the cell, the young man's voice had already turned to pleading: "Please forgive me!"
However, no matter what he said, no one paid any attention to his request, and instead drew louder ridicules.
Suddenly, the old man with mechanical eyes in front of him turned and smiled: "Don't look around, it will be your turn in a moment."
Qing Chen glanced at him calmly, and the old man suddenly felt that the young man's eyes on the opposite side seemed to be different, and he didn't know why, he actually felt a sudden tightness in his heart.
After having dinner at the window, the formation was scattered.
Qing Chen found that the three people around him approached him, as if to control him directly!
He immediately speeded up his pace, and the other party also speeded up his pace, enclosing him tightly!
In the next moment, the picture in this prison fortress seemed to have passed through Qing Chen's mind.
On the dome, 18 steel beast-like machine guns stood by silently, like a sleeping tiger.
72 drones are suspended in the card slots of the gray alloy ceiling, like sleeping wasps.
210 monitors slowly turned the angle, and 3 robots stood with guns in the square.
The prisoners received the food from the window one by one, and some people complained that it was unpalatable synthetic meat today.
Someone was washing the dishes next to the sink, and someone was washing the dishes for others.
As more and more people finished eating, the square began to become lively. Everyone shuttled back and forth, some went to the fitness area, and some were onlookers for the newcomer ceremony.
However, everyone subconsciously avoided the middle-aged man staring at the chessboard.
The man still looked at the chessboard earnestly, no one approached for five meters around it, like a calm and hard reef on the sea level, all turbulent waters and ships must retreat.
Suddenly, Qing Chen was carrying the dinner plate, speeding through the three-person circle, and walking towards the middle-aged man.
Looking at the direction he was heading, many people suddenly realized what this newcomer wanted to do.
Gradually, more and more people turned their eyes to him and whispered. The expressions on each prisoner's face seemed to be waiting to see him joke.
There are many prison newcomers who find that middle-aged men are abnormal, and there are also many prison newcomers who want to rely on each other to get out of trouble. Qing Chen has never been the only one.
But in fact everyone failed.
However, Qing Chen turned a deaf ear to those bantering sounds, and continued to carry the dinner plates with no one else, passing through the crowd.
Before he could get closer, he was stopped by the young man next to the middle-aged man. The other party smiled and said, "Newcomer, I know what your calculations are, but we won't help you."
The other party guessed Qing Chen's idea, and Qing Chen cast his gaze behind the young man.
The middle-aged man turned a deaf ear to what was happening next to him, as if he hadn't heard anything.
He looked at the middle-aged man earnestly and said, "If the soldiers advance, I can solve this endgame."
The middle-aged man didn't raise his head until then, then the square suddenly became quiet, and the cat opened his eyes.